Login here! 
Written by There are no real shockers in this list, James is a very practical man after all
Top of his favourite list is olive oil, specifically single estate olive oil if you are to enjoy the best flavour an olive oil can produce. The thing about olive oil is that when I was young I can never remember my mother cooking with it. Whether this is because we were poor, it was not easily available or simply because she is English and in those days the English only cooked with fatty, cholesterol inducing, heart disease supporting ingredients, I’m not really sure.
What I do know is that olive oil is in vogue and practically every recipe one comes across insists on using olive oil. If there is one solid tip I can give it’s not to cook with Extra Virgin Olive Oil. It has a low tolerance to heat and will burn quite easily. Even when cooking with regular olive oil and requiring high temperatures I add a little butter. This must be my mothers influence coming through.
The second pantry favourite is balsamic vinegar. Too be honest I don’t use too much of this in my cooking, don’t ask me why, I just don’t. The older a balsamic is the better, preferably 10 years old, the flavour is significantly more mature and deeper.
We ran some chocolate tips from James a couple of weeks back and this features in his favourite top 5. He recommends chocolate with a high cocoa content.
Fourth on the list is canned tomatoes and they are essential pantry items. Whether you like them whole peeled or chopped, always have a few cans available. They are a very common ingredient and will not go to waste in the back of the cupboard. If your budget allows look for Italian tomatoes they are generally of a superior quality and come from a country whose cooking revolves around tomatoes.
Finally we come to salt and before people start cringing saying that salt is bad for you, it isn’t. What is bad for you is the amount of salt piled into ready made foods. The reason for this is that salt is the king of flavour enhancers and in order to make food taste good they use a lot of it. When cooking at home you are using salt to draw our the flavour of you fresh ingredients and only need a couple of pinches to do this successfully, not a handful.
What are your favourite pantry ingredients?
